This invention relates generally to rail yards, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for determining whether a train engine is coupled to a rail car.
Rail yards are the hubs of railroad transportation systems. Therefore, rail yards perform many services, for example, freight origination, interchange and termination, locomotive storage and maintenance, assembly and inspection of new trains, servicing of trains running through the facility, inspection and maintenance of railcars, and railcar storage. The various services in a rail yard compete for resources such as personnel, equipment, and space in various facilities so that managing the entire rail yard efficiently is a complex operation.
The railroads in general recognize that yard management tasks would benefit from the use of management tools based on optimization principles. Such tools use a current yard status and a list of tasks to be accomplished to determine an optimum order in which to accomplish these tasks.
However, any management system relies on credible and timely data concerning the present state of the system under management. In most rail yards, the current data entry technology is a mixture of manual and automated methods. For example, automated equipment identification (AEI) readers and AEI computers determine the location of rolling stock at points in the sequence of operations, but in general, this information limits knowledge of rolling stock whereabouts to at most, the moment at which the rolling stock arrived, the moment at which the rolling stock passes the AEI reader, and the moment at which the rolling stock departs.
The location of assets within a rail yard is typically reported using voice radio communications. Point detection approaches such as wheel counters, track circuits, and automatic equipment identification (AEI) tag readers have been used to detect assets at specific, discrete locations on the tracks. Modern remote control systems use GPS and AEI tags to prevent the remote-controlled locomotive from traveling outside the yard limits. Cameras have been deployed throughout rail yards with shared displays to allow rail yard personnel (i.e. yard masters, hump masters, manager of terminal operations) to locate engines and other assets.
In particular, rail yard operators couple and uncouple rail cars as they enter, leave and traverse through the rail yard. These rail cars are coupled and uncoupled to train engines including locomotive engines and yard engines. For example, operators can uncouple rail cars from inbound locomotive engines and couple rail cars to outbound locomotive engines. Further, yard engines can be coupled to rail cars in order to transport the rail cars to appropriate locations within the rail yard for loading, unloading, or other processing.
Train engines in the rail yard can be tracked to determine the progress of a task being performed, as well as to determine whether the train engine(s) is/are being utilized efficiently. In order to track engines at a rail yard, an operator can monitor the coupling and decoupling of locomotive engines and yard engines wherein information about the train status is provided via radio communications. However, an operator-monitored system can be inefficient in that it does not result in real time monitoring of the train engine's status as such communication, if present, may be exchanged well after the coupling or uncoupling event has occurred.
For efficient rail yard operations it would be useful to have an automatic system, which monitors the status of the yard engines and provides real time data. In particular, real time data indicating whether an engine is coupled or decoupled from a rail car will provide insight as to the progress of rail yard operations. In addition, rail yards may have many yard engines actively working to process inbound trains and to build outbound trains.
Therefore, yard operational efficiency may be realized by the ability to automatically verify that an engine is coupled to and moving one or more rail cars. Further benefits may be realized by using yard engine operational status in yard planning tasks. With automated, real-time knowledge as to operation of yard engines, the yard operation team will be able to assess available and utilized resources to plan subsequent tasks accordingly.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an apparatus and system for indicating whether train engines are coupled or decoupled from rail cars, wherein real time data is provided from an automatic monitoring system.